Posted
by
michael
on Friday November 23, 2001 @05:34PM
from the showing-feelings-of-an-almost-human-nature dept.

Several people have submitted stories about the author of Mplayer accusing Warpvision of, err, "borrowing" their code for Warpvision's OS/2 player. I have two reactions - one, someone still uses OS/2? And two, something about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery...Update from CD: Hold on there, everyone. I downloaded the WarpVision source and lo and behold the GPL is there in all its free software glory. I think Mplayer spoke too soon, too rashly, or alternatively, WarpVision was just too slow to update thier site. I'd love to hear both sides of this before we all freak out. Further Info: It was pointed out to me (CD) that the MPlayer program itself is not Open Source software (it calls itself Basically GPL, which, BTW, hasn't been approved by the OSI), so in the end this might just be proprietary software piracy. (Yawn)

or even worse, a virus that sends your complete info to some irc server, when you put in your pin number...... and the worst case of all, being nuked off the net by a group of ATM's running some sort of Sub7, wouldn't that be embarrasing hehe.

Michael, please click the link to Mplayer's site. They took the entirety of the mplayer source, changed the output plugin for OS/2, and released it as binary-only. It appears that source has now been released and the issue has been resolved, but at least read the article before letting them off light. They tried to pull a fast one on Mplayer using very little or no code of their own. I don't know if you call that imitation, I call it stealing.

You are right on the merits of the case but it was a bit ridiculous for the MPlayer people to overemphasize the "Russia" part - their tirade about this being bad for "Russian" Coders suggests their fiery was perhaps not entirely based on the license violation.

They took the entirety of the mplayer source, changed the output plugin for OS/2, and released it as binary-only. [...] They tried to pull a fast one on Mplayer using very little or no code of their own. I don't know if you call that imitation, I call it stealing.

They stole, but this is not what they stole. Using someone else's code is not stealing, since the party whose code is used does not lose their code. Under the GPL, this sort of using is encouraged. After all, this is one of the things Free Software is truly about. So they did not "take" Mplayer's code, or "steal" Mplayer's code, they used it, and that's fine.

But then, they stole. (If indeed this is what happened... that's what is claimed, and seems to be resolved, and we will for discussion assume it is the case.) They stole from the community the right and ability to reuse and modify the code. This is what the GPL is designed to protect. And this is where we must be careful.

Code cannot be stolen. No form of "intellectual property" can be stolen by being copied and used. This is not stealing, there is no loss. The loss and theft occurs when the right and ability to modify and use or reuse is taken away. This right is the only thing that can truly be taken away by theft. Let us all beware of such things.

Correct. While complying with the license. By not releasing the source, their right to use the source was gone, and the effectively stole.

Look at this way: You walk into a car dealership and take a car out for a test drive. Fine, right? There's nothing wrong with that; it's fully legal. Now what if you don't come back? That's grand theft. Try telling the judge you were just "test-driving" the car all the way to Mexico.

If license violation can be proved to be intentional, that would be considered stealing. Period. (Again, assuming the GPL holds up in court.)

Correct. While complying with the license. By not releasing the source, their right to use the source was gone, and the effectively stole.

Or they just broke the license and committed copyright infrigement. They didn't actually "take away" the code. I do agree they stole---they stole our rights given by the GPL.

Look at this way: You walk into a car dealership and take a car out for a test drive. Fine, right? There's nothing wrong with that; it's fully legal. Now what if you don't come back? That's grand theft. Try telling the judge you were just "test-driving" the car all the way to Mexico.

Well that's not really an accurate analogy, since you would have been taking away the car.

If license violation can be proved to be intentional, that would be considered stealing. Period. (Again, assuming the GPL holds up in court.)

Well IANAL so I can't tell you the legal term, but I don't think it would be stealing. You'd just be committing copyright infrigement. If the GPL doesn't "hold up" in court, it'd default to your basic copyright, which is "all rights reserved," so... you'd still be committing copyright infrigement.

Sorry, but you don't get a blank check to dictate terms to people when you release a work under copyright. Copyright is not even a true "right." It's simply a government-granted, limited, temporary monopoly on a piece of information. The "limited" part means that you only get the rights that the government grants you. If you aren't happy with that, then don't release the work.

I guess there's no such thing as identity theft, since the party whose identity I've used to gain goods and services is still in their possession...

Of course there is, just calling it "theft" is a misnomer. They're not stealing per se (unless they use the said information to take from the person whose identity they're using), they're illegally misrepresenting themselves, something like fraud. Of course, that's not what we call it, but the term does not change what it is.

Please don't generalize using your ideological beliefs. Theft is a legal matter, and there are many forms of it, not all of which involve the tangible...

I never said it must deal with the tangible. I said that to truly be theft, it must take away from a party. This is not the same as just taking without the "away" part. Remember, I said your rights are being stolen here. Rights are certainly not (directly) tangible items.

The GPL (the license mplayer is under) provides consent by the author for modification and redistribution provided they follow the GPL. If they do not, they are not acting under the provision of consent, and are STEALING the code...

Aside from Mplayer not actually being under the GPL per se, let's assume for the sake of discussion it is. Taking GPL code and using it in a non-GPL product is not "stealing code," it is copyright infringement. It is "stealing community rights." That's what I'm saying.

It never fails to amaze me how many people will take an off-the-cuff remark and run with it rather than examining the actual situation at hand.

Here's a general hint that applies to all slashdot stories at all times: we assume you can read and understand the links, and we have at most a few sentences to write about what are often very complex topics. Always, always take the links first and foremost, and don't take offense if the blurb has a flip comment or doesn't seem 100% accurate in every conceivable way. That's why the links are there.

In any case, the reason I didn't express an opinion like "Warpvision stole the code, they should be shot at dawn" was because it isn't clear, at all, what is going on here. You're only hearing from one side, which is rarely conducive to getting the truth.

Quite frankly, I find nothing wrong with Slashdot. What I think is wrong with Slashdot is a userbase that not only doesn't understand how Slashdot works, but can't be bothered to understand it before they run around screaming about how "bad" Slashdot is. Pity, really.

This page [mplayerhq.hu] says that it is illegal to distribute MPlayer because some of the code is non-GPL. But they don't say which code they're referring to. The MPlayer source code doesn't (AFAIK) include a copy of the GPL, and apart from a copy of the above web page under Docs/, doesn't refer to licensing at all. There are no mentions of a license in the.c/.h files, except in the files taken from other projects (try "grep -ir licens *"). For all I know, it's illegal for me to distribute or use the MPlayer source code at all. Maybe MPlayer is the one stealing code from other GPL projects.

Their explanation is extremely vague. I understand why you couldn't include the Windows DLL files, the Divx4 codec, etc. with a binary distribution. But why couldn't you compile it with the FFmpeg GPL codecs only, and distribute that as a binary if you make the source code available? The FFmpeg decoders seem better than the Windows DLL files anyway, and they can run on non-x86 platforms.

Just because the folks over at warpvision did not want to release alpha code, does not mean they intended to steal it. This issue has come up many times before with other GPL products, though I must say, the mplayer reaction was, to put it mildly, childish.

I also find it very funny that the first thing the opensource project (mplayer) threatens to do is sue. They did not even bother to contact the waprvision folks first.

Oh well, nothing changes. People like to overreact as it seems to make them feel better.

I guess FSF (Free Software Foundation), ffmpeg authors, would eagerly sue them to fucking hell! Such an action against humanity can't go unpunished! They will die a dog's death for sure I swear! Lay back, we'll teach them that stealing from OpenSource is a BAD thing, and stealing from MPlayer is even WORSE!

Take it easy, guys. Nobody needs to die a dog's death here. It'll all work out. Relax, smell the flowers. It's just software. Hey, what are you doing with that axe? aaaaaaaaggg

Linux-community dumbfound us by their answer to our "technical" release of WarpVision 0.0.12. WarpVision is a GPL software and we're not hide that WarpVision contains now some of other GPL projects. Okay, wait for official press-release for this situation.

Who knows the truth? I don't, but if they did "borrow" the code, at least they 'fessed up pretty quick. Perhaps we should of asked first what was happening?

Companies that do obscure stuff probably pull crap like this all the time and just assume nobody is going to notice. After all, if they did tell anyone, Mplayer could just be suddenly declared 'free for noncommercial use' in future versions. Granted this isn't legal or right or anything, but it is probably a financially safer route to take in a lot of cases.

I have suffered way too many "Still using CLI?" for using Linux, haven't you? If someone want to *write* programs for OS/2, all the power to them. "Burrowing" source code is not so good, but that is cleared up now (read above posts!).

"I have suffered way too many "Still using CLI?" for using Linux,
haven't you? If someone want to *write* programs for OS/2, all the
power to them."

Except that, unlike Linux, OS/2 is somewhat of a developmental
dead-end. If a piece of current hardware doesn't work under Linux, I
know I only have to wait a month or two. On the other hand, it
must've been a year or two ago that I heard someone lament about his
inability to get OS/2 drivers for a piece of IBM hardware.

While there's nothing wrong with someone using OS/2, especially if it
does what they need, it is surprising that people are still
fighting the uphill battle of continuing to use a closed-source
operating system in the absence of support from the original vendor.
It's almost like taking the biggest gripe against Windows (lack of
source) and the biggest gripe against Linux (lack of commercial
support to the degree that it exists for Windows) and creating a
single system with both problems. (I may be wrong on the second
point, depending on how well OS/2 runs Win9x-based executables. I
know it did run the Win3.x stuff.)

That being said, if IBM were to dump OS/2 into the GPL, I would love
to play with a project that attempted to get it running with support
for more current hardware by snarfing drivers from, say, the Linux
kernel. I've always wanted to try it, but I was foiled by driver
issues back when I originally attempted to install it.

how can a russian coder steal source code? he's using it in a way the author did not intend, but he's not under the same laws. in russia, code is not property, and unless it is property, it cannot be stolen.

I think it is a contract/license issue. I'm sure Russia has contract law. If you use the software you have agreed to the contract/license. Contracts put conditions on your actions that are not normally there under the law. So, unless it is legal to violate licenses/contracts in Russia they broke the law (maybe? perhaps? I really don't know but I don't think it is a property issue.).

"use" alone is permitted so I probably should have been more precise with respect to the license. The coders didn't just "use," they "modified" and the license covers that. So, the point remains, if Russian law allows enforcement of contracts/licenses then the coders would be required to follow the GPL otherwise they were violating it - according to Russian law.

Copyright law, I believe, gives the author the right to come up with such a contract as GPL. Whether Russia has such a copyright law is maybe what the original poster was commenting on.

" I have two reactions - one, someone still uses OS/2? And two, something about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery..."

So basically, if I break in and steal Michael's computer, he won't want me prosecuted so long as I explain to him that I was flattering him by imitating him.... does this guy think at all before he posts his unecessary comments?

Believe it or not, there is this thing called "open source", based on the little-known fact that if you get information from someone, they still have it. Or at least I think some guys named Thomas Jefferson, Richard Stallman, and Eric Raymond were saying something about that. I think they, like, said something about how it's different from material things because you don't deprive the original owner of it when you "steal" it.

Believe it or not, there is this thing called "open source", based on the little-known fact that if you get information from someone, they still have it. Or at least I think some guys named Thomas Jefferson, Richard Stallman, and Eric Raymond were saying something about that. I think they, like, said something about how it's different from material things because you don't deprive the original owner of it when you "steal" it.

Good analogy, otherwise. *cough*

Beleive it or not, there is something called 'intellectual property'. This has absolutely nothing to do with open source. If you don't believe me try grabbing a copy of the code for Windows XP, rebuilding it, packaging it as your own and selling it. I am sure Thomas Jefferson will rise from the dead to defend you from yourself when you do. *cough* *cough* *hack* holy shit... JamieF is quite a bit of a furball, isn't he-she.

"There's a difference. When you use the handicapped space in the parking lot you don't steal it, do you? No. You perform a moving violation."

You couldn't be more wrong. Stealing the space is exactly what you are doing. For the time you occupy it when someone who really needs it you are stealing it from them.

"Ask Microsoft. Billy Gates started this whole IP crap with his "open letter" about people "stealing" his crappy BASIC compiler."

This is a perfect example of how truly misinformed you are. Do you really think the first IP laws were only passed in the 1980's ? Do you really think Bill Gates had that much power back then. I'm not a big fan of history, but in this case a little knowledge would go a long way to helping you see how truly absurd your statements are.

"Remember that next time you support IP. You're telling the goverment you are only worth $30 to them, as far as I see it. The US couldn't even pay off their debt at that rate!"

I didn't "support" IP, I merely stated that such a thing exists. I never indicated whether I liked the way things are, only that they are in fact that way. And you might want to take a look around you... the US government could give a flying fuck what I or any of it's other 'citizens' tell them... unless of course they have greenbacks to contribute, and lots of them. As far as they are concerned I am overvalued at US $30.00 because I have never donated that much to support any political agenda.

On a press conference, A'rpi said the big truth: he hates GPL! Well this sounds very rude from him, but let everyone know what happened! The poor fella tried to compile a flash disk driver into the kernel to boot from it and... it wouldn't! The little geezer is non-GPL so he can't be compiled into the kernel, which is in fact GPL! Let me quote him:
rts NOW! GPL SUX - Utalom!!! - kibaszott szemet! - which I now don't want to trto english. Now he has rm -rf/*GPL* in crontab.

Order MPlayer - Boycott GPL! T-shirts NOW!

Now I'm confused. Do these MPlayer likes like the
GPL? Or do they hate it?

That whole story is confusing. Nothing prevents non-GPL code from being compiled into the kernel. It's also a vague problem description. Did the kernel not compile, not boot, or did the "poor fella" just refuse to compile non-GPL code?

So, how can the OS/2 team we're talking about release their project under the GPL? It makes no sense! You cannot take someone's project, modify it and just because you had access to the source you can decide for yourself what you'll do of that code.

If MPlayer is not released under the GPL, then
that's probably a GPL violation. In my MPlayer
build directory, there is a file called
ac3-iec958.c which was released under the GPL
by Juha Yrjölä. Because ac3-iec958 is built
into MPlayer, by the "viral nature" of the
GPL, surely the whole of MPlayer must be
released under the GPL.

I looked at the licensing discussion on the mplayer web site. It really is GPL, as far as I can tell.

There are some files in the distribution which are not GPL, however.

Implication: You can redistribute the sources, but you cannot redistribute the binaries that use the non-GPL'd pieces. If you make a binary that uses only the GPL'd pieces, then you can redistribute that.

While what you say is true, maintaining such a strictly library relationship to the packages mentioned I expect is somewhat difficult. And surely he has been very careful not to use ANY code fragments from those libraries in any of his own code. I'm pretty sure anyone who looked through his code carefully would find GPL violations all over the place. But I haven't done so, and therefore cannot say for sure.

I also don't think that the GPL is the only outstanding legal question in the case of Mplayer.

Even if we ignore all the libraries, there's still
ac3-iec958.c which is in the main MPlayer source
directory. It's not in one of those library sub-directories. Also, the libraries distributed with
MPlayer are GPL, not LGPL.

It appears that a *lot* of people here are forgetting exactly why MPlayer is distributed in source only.

There are no binaries on the webpage and it is indeed a violation of the GPL to provide them. If you read the GPL you'll notice that most of those rules apply to anybody distributing binaries.

Do remember that the whole idea of our little culture is not "ensuring the GPL is conformed to." It is "ensuring that we have the freedom of seeing and having the ability to modify source code."

The MPlayer guys, in fact, satisfy both, as long as they never distribute binaries. In the same vein, you are free to download, compile, and use MPlayer, but as soon as you distribute a binary, you violate the GPL.

Well, you dont have to release under the GPL itself if you link against GPL software. You do however have to release under the GPL or some license that is more 'free' than the GPL.

For example, it is prefectly acceptable to mix and match (revised) BSD licensed code with GPL code and distribute that. The GPL parts are under GPL, the BSD parts are under BSD license. But you cannot throw proprietary code (or proprietarize the BSD code) into it without first removing the GPL code.

The viral aspect of the GPL is sortof misunderstood. It doesnt affect any other code, it just affects wether or not you can distribute the original GPL code, and you can do that as long as the other licenses in the distributed source arent in conflict with the GPL granted freedoms.

Not that I have read through the MPlayer license so I dont know if it conflicts with any GPL clauses.

How can the OS/2 team we're talking about release their project under the GPL? It makes no sense! You cannot take someone's project, modify it and just because you had access to the source you can decide for yourself what you'll do of that code.

I thought about it some more (owww my brane hurts!) and I hope this will be my final position on this subject:

MPlayer authors claim that their project is
not released under the GPL

Their project includes a file (ac3-iec958.c)
which was released under the GPL, therefore they
should have released MPlayer under the GPL

Their project also includes the source code
to several GPLd libraries (libac3, libmpeg2,
libvo) and some other GPLd code as well

These GPLd libraries are not only not
LGPLd, they are also statically linked, which
greatly weakens the "they are only libraries"
argument

They really should have released MPlayer under
the GPL

Warpvision still had no right to use MPlayer's code without permission, even if Warpvision
released their modified code under the GPL

Firstar [firstar.com] bank uses OS/2 in their ATM's for some ungodly reason. A friend of mine recently lost their old revision card in a machine - it rebooted when they tried to withdraw, and watched in horror as it went through an OS/2 bootup sequence.

OS/2 was one of MS's biggest competitors back in the early-mid 90's. Yes, there actually were competing commercial operating systems to MS offerings once!

IBM dumped a ton of money into convincing users that OS/2 was good for the home, and better than the Windows 3.11 (and later Win95) alternative. They eventually gave up a short while after Windows 95 was released. Apparently people who said OS/2 sucks for having a 20MB disk install and a 16MB memory requirement were more than happy to supply the bucks to update their hardware for Win95.

Too many people apparently forgot the big OS/2 vs. Win 95/Windows NT battle and all the dirty tricks and FUD that was spread. One classic example was a Ziff-Davis publication's "10 best-selling software products list" being put on hiatus when OS/2 Warp 3.0 landed in the #1 position for several weeks, beating out MS's offerings, only to return after OS/2 dropped off the chart.

OS/2 is a casualty of MS's monopolistic practices, and should be at least championed as a fallen hero in the MS monopoly battles rather than beat upon because it is an IBM (and ex-MS) product.

so yeah, it looks like they *did* steal some source code from mplayer. "but now they've released source, its ok," you say. no it isn't. apparently, they now claim that warpvision is/was GPL software. well, mplayer is released under a couple of licenses... its not all GPL, so that does not allow redistribution completely under GPL for derived works. (does that make sense to antybody else?) hmmm...

i do have to say, however, that i'm a bit disappointed in Arpad's rather immature reaction.
Arpad! you listening? rabit, knee-jerk reactions like this make us look bad. i have a lot of respect for you as a programmer, but your reaction is way out of line.
"They will die a dog's death for sure I swear!" its SOFTWARE, for god's sake. lighten up.

The update to this story mentions that everything's ok because the WarpVision code has the GPL, but the Mplayer author contends that Mplayer is not GPL, hence the following quote from the Mplayer homepage:

They also claim to be GPL. They aren't because MPlayer that they modified, also isn't GPL. It has its own license. So that's another lie.

On the MPlayer News [mplayerhq.hu] page, it is also claimed that WarpVision forgot to mention the authors of ffmpeg [sourceforge.net] in their credits file. The strange thing is, ffmpeg is released under the GPL, and is also used by MPlayer -- then, I wonder, how can MPlayer not be released under the GPL?

Actually, they say their code is GPL, but some stuff they include (codecs and other things, I'd guess...haven't checked the whole thing) are not under GPL...that's why they get pissed off whenever somebody posts binaries of MPlayer...according to them, some of the code can't be legally distributed as binaries...that's why they say the code is basically GPL (and not Basically GPL as in a name of a license, but as in "mostly GPL").

Check the Mplayer web site. (they have an update in response to the source release) This is not resolved yet.

One of the big issues appears to be that Warpvision is GPL, but Mplayer is NOT GPL. It has its own, different license. Just taking the code and changing the license to one you like better (even if it is the GPL) is not acceptable, no matter how much credit you give people.

OS/2 is still widely used in banking, as the underlying OS for ATM machines and elsewhere whenever uptime and reliability are of utmost importance. Personally, I haven't used it in five years, just thought I'd let you know.

We(being the psuedo-gov organisation i support) just migrated 4500 users from an OS2 Domian to NT4. The OS2 boxes and domain are still "on line", although not used for authentication for the last week but smply in case we need to back out:P
It was ugly and hard to use..

Ugly? You must have missed some of the goodies available at, for instance, http://projects.netlabs.org/ .

Hard to use? Years of usability research went into the creation of the Workplace Shell, which shows in the consistent and predictable way it works- which cannot be said of certain desktop environments for unix/linux. (Which is why I've joined the GNOME usability project, by the way).

You're right. I recently rebooted my usually-running-Linux machine to its old Warp4 partition a couple days ago. A bit of nostalgia hit me as I realized that the WPS is still a very nice interface, far more consistent than any version of Windows I've seen.

Micheal, I would suggest you try to learn a few things about OS/2 before you assume that it is dead.

Many banks all around the world use OS/2 for their ATMs and office computers because of one reason, it is even more rocksolid than your precious Linux/Unix.

The last released version of OS/2, Warp Ver 4 (merlin) was amazing. In 1991 it had and impresive list of features such as: Voice recognition software that was 98%+ accurate;
OpenGL 1.0; every network protocol nameable, Partial Win32 API compatibility and full Win16 compatibility.

As Slashdoters, you should support OS/2 and learn about it. It was most likely one of the most powerful and stable operating systems in existence, and probably still is. It had great potential to become THE operating system. If it wasn't for Microsoft boycoting/strong arming IBM out of development of OS/2. I would suggest you read "Hard Drive" which is a biography of Bill Gates and Microsoft. (It is written by an author with the last name Wallace. I can't remeber his first name). It explains the situation very well.

I am quite shocked that you sheepish Slashdotters would not like OS/2. You should just because of the fact that Microsoft took it down. Obviously you are not a knowledgable herd of sheep. (You can run Xfree86 in OS/2!!!! WOWZERS!)

In truth I use Windows XP. I would use 0S/2 if it wasn't so hard to install and if it had a greater list of features. OS/2 does have alot of problems to overcome in the modern day, and probably isn't the best operating system to use on a daily bassis for regular computer usage. (sounds like linux to me.) It could have been, and still could be though.

Just so you know why OS/2 is on all those ATM machines you see out there, it's because those are 'IBM' machines made by IBM, installed by IBM and serviced by IBM, and it was IBM who put OS/2 in them. Since you're dealing with the banks, i.e if it ain't broke don't fix it, OS/2 lives happily on those machines.

The latest version of OS/2 is not Warp 4, it is the IBM Convenience Pack, which was released this year. It is effectively Warp 5, although technically it's just Warp 4 with all the latest fixes and updates pre-applied. However, there is also a VAR version of the CP, and that's called eComStation.

BTW, eCS is much easier to install now. You might want to give it a shot.

My understanding is that we can thank MS for the single input queue--and by the time MS dumped it, there was a large pile of software that expected it. I'll agree that it's broken, but to some extent IBM was stuck with it, and Warp 4 provides a way (admittedly requiring human intervention) to unwedge it.

A few weeks ago there was something about a company reselling parts of products of another company. The EULA said this was not allowed, but when taken to court it was said that in order to take parts from a bundle of software, you don't have to install it and therefore you may not have read the license and most certainly not have clicked `i agree'. Actually this situation resembles the MPlayer-situation a bit. It's waaay to easy to install MPlayer without ever reading about some license. Most source-files are totally license-less. I wonder what would have happened if this particular case would have been taken to court...but I'm glad that wasn't necessary.

Some of OS/2's strength shows in the fact that in the mid 90's Sprint Corporate HQ ran two phone lines only for all incoming and outgoing faxes. Handling and routing was done via an OS/2 box using a Brooktrout card.
I've seen a lot of "cool" applications of multi-tasking using OS/2, but many less these days. I was a "Salmon Ninja" for a while, before Warp 4 and a lack of native software in my industry made me pay Redmond for it's sewage.
Oh, well, OS/2 isn't the only product that starved in development because of the competition and superior marketing. Think Beta video tape, for one.

Yup. Our ACD system (call centre queues and the like, ACD standing for Automated Call Distribution) was a single board Pentium 133 w/32 megs RAM running OS/2. You booted it up, watched it load a bunch of DOS drivers, boot to the OS/2 desktop, then autorun the phone app.

So if someone steals GPL code, it's a horrendous crime worthy of getting everyone involved and posting to slashdot...but if it's proprietary code that's stolen, no one cares?

The difference is they didn't steal from "us" (the Open Source community), so it wouldn't be Slashdot news. It'd get kind of boring here if SD should post every time somebody sells an unlicensed copy of Windows.

If there is a plane crash and hundreds die it makes the front page. Thousands of car accidents where a few (or zero) people die in each one. Yawn.

The common activities (such as auto accidents and proprietary software piracy) are not news after the Nth occurance (where N is a sufficiently great number, as related to the event in question). Sufficently rare activities (such as the "theft" of GPL code, or plane crashes) happen infrequently enough that the general public (or the/. crowd) find it interesting. That's how it works.

Alas the WarpVision mailing list isn't archived anywhere that I know of, but I'll do my best to sumarise:

Someone noticed that WarpVision had changed a lot between two versions, doing some things better but some no longer. Someone else then noticed that the debug output was much like that of MPlayer

At that point, the MPlayer guys were alearted, and decided that it was very likely that WarpVision was an uncredited port of MPlater to OS/2, and also a closed source one. They mailed the WarpVision Developers, and asked what was up.

The WarpVision guys initially played dum, then said they had only used a tiny bit of code and would release the source later.

Tempers flared, and a lot of discussion went on between the WarpVision guys and the MPlayer guys. In the end, the WarpVision developers credited MPlayer, and released the source.

Now, the flame is over who was in the wrong, who needs to apologise, and if the projects should remain seperate, or if the WarpVision changes should go into the offical MPlayer tree. The issue isn't resolved, but the GPL violation is

You all forgot two things :
1. It is me that is writing the news, not A'rpi,
so blame me:)
2. MPlayer is NOT GPL. And that's one of the
reason why binaries (whether MPlayer or warpvision) are illegal. GPL and non-GPL
can't be mixed in binaries, but can be in the
source.
(btw it's in TFM)

The few times I've seen an ATM (banking station, not network pipe) crash, it was running OS/2. I can't say why, not having used it, but it seems to be pretty reliable in its role doing bank transactions & verification all day.

A software project, which uses codecs from another operative system and binary code from lots of different companies, not to talk about the DivX codecs which is hacked microsoft codecs (yes, there are alternatives nowadays) are angry at someone else for using THEIR fake-GPL code. Yeah, that's not two-faced. Really.

MPlayer:
1) contains GPL'ed code.
2) Says they have a license that doesn't allow binary distribution. At no point is that license documented anywhere, nor is it listed on which files it applies to.
3) MPlayer has beefs with _anyone_ distributing binary packages, including distributions, such as Mandrake and Debian. No wonder I didn't know they existed.

Primarily it seems that their beef is with having to support other people's compiles. Of course, they are perfectly allowed to selectively apply support, and to even put restrictions on re-distribution of the code that they wrote. Of course, that does mean that they will need to specifically _list_ the restricted code, which they haven't done.

Personally, I think MPlayer is just bitching because they are getting newbie questions on the mailing list. I think they've got a crap architecture (since it requires compile-time selection of platform). I also think that it would be very nice for someone to take the code, replace the non-GPL bits, and allow people to get on with their lives.

So, reinventing the wheel with different bugs shows intelligence? I'm sorry, but not using existing libraries that work well is not intelligent, simply arrogant, the "Not Invented Here" syndrome. That aside, they do a significant amount themselves, they have pretty good (perhaps the best) avi and asf parsers. Also, their input/output routines are quite flexible. That said, the gui is a piece of crap, and the compile can be a bit fickle, and the developers do occasionally exhibit degrees of arrogance. I like PythonTheater, but I'm partial:) If you think mplayer uses external code too much, you could *really* criticize PythonTheater, using avifile, smpeg, and SDL for all decoding and input output, as well as using ROX's configuration system. That is really the strength of open software, being able to use components that have been developed more and not starting from scratch.

I personally don't have a problem with compile-time options, especially when it can optimize
the hell outta the code it produces. Not to flame either, but what's the big problem with
compiling the program anyways? Isn't that something you're used to by now?

Compile time optimisation is good, however, you should be able to select which function to use at runtime. Function pointers don't cost anything, and it is easy enough to select which array of pointers to use at program startup.

As for not compiling it, I shouldn't have to compile code for my linux box. I do enough compiling of my own code, I shouldn't have to compile anyone elses. That's what package management systems are all about.

I have no doubt that MPlayer is a capable player (once you get it compiled). But that doesn't mean that it is an inaccessible product, and until such time as they provide binary releases, won't be used by anyone except a niche. If they don't want to provide binaries, they should release the code and let someone else do it.

Don't bitch about it either, write your own player.

Aah, the familiar "open source" developer's refrain. As soon as they indicate which files are covered by which license, and provide a written copy of the license, then I might just make a fork. Until then, I've got better code to write.

From the MPlayer home page, it seems the MPlayer authors are mostly concerned about WarpVision stealing credit. They make a good case for that having happened.

Their claims about license violations seems confused at best. They claim MPlayer is released under its own license, but I found no such license in the source code for MPlayer 0.5. The closest I found is the following quote in the documentation:

MPlayer would be distributable under the terms of the
GNU GPL, but distributing binary packages is forbidden

Of course, the GPL forbids imposing such conditions on redistribution, so one must interpret this as saying that MPlayer is not distributable under the GPL, and since there is no other license supplied, must one understand MPlayer is not distributable at all?

Additionally, MPlayer uses code that is under the GPL, notably the MGA video drivers and some of the monitor frequency synchronization drivers. Thus either MPlayer is GPL or MPlayer violates the GPL or copyright laws.

Given MPlayer's licensing confusion, I'm not surprised WarpVision treated it as GPL. IMHO, that's the most reasonable interpretation that can be made of the situation. Regardless of licensing, of course, WarpVision should have more accurately and prominently advertised the debt it owed to MPlayer.

By the way, the vitriolic and childish attitude of the MPlayer author on this issue is yet another reminder of why it's a good idea to only use and contribute to really free software (which MPlayer apparently isn't)... I would hate to subject my use of a piece of software to the whims of such an apparently confused and aggressive person. And of course, I would hate to have such a person use code I wrote to impose their whims on others, which is why I use the GPL:-).

They are probably the most arrogant people I have ever had the displeasure of encountering. Not even the infamous djb (qmail) or tdr (openbsd) is anywhere as arrogant and insulting as this group of developers. I was really suprised, I didnt think anyone could top djb.

Just read their mailing list -- they attach headers to all mails relayed through the list telling everyone to "RTFM", and take great pleasure in treating everyone as idiots, even more pleasure in insulting them.

And the mplayer config script has a huge wild-eyed rant about redhat, if you dare to compile it with gcc 2.96 (even one known and proven to work perfectly fine, eg 2.96-85)

Oddly enough, I have experienced almost identical attitude from other hungarians. What IS it about that freaking country that makes everyone a flaming asshole?

1. They use a whole bunch of GPL code, and depend on it, thus making their mplayer a derivative work and thus GPL, yet claim their work isn't GPL

Using GPL lib/code doesn't automatically make the derivative work GPL, it just creates a situation where you can either distribute it under the GPL or not at all. In this case the latter seems to be the only option, as MPlayer also uses third party non-GPL components which they simply can't distribute under GPL (because they're licensed in a different way, and even the source code is not available).

Think about it. They're infringing the copyright of whatever GPL code they didn't write themselves by linking it with non-GPL code (for example the codec DLLs), even if they claimed MPlayer was GPL. So legally MPlayer can't be distributed at all without infringing the copyright of at least the authors of included GPL libraries.

Copyright generally forbids you to make other than "fair use" copies of another's artistic work. The GPL provides far more than fair use rights upon acceptance of the license, but those rights exist only when one complies with the license.

If copyright did not exist, you could ignore the GPL, and do what you would with code that came into your hands. While the result might be a world consistent with more of an LGPL or BSD style license, permitting secret (if not proprietary) extentions to free code, it would mean that distributed modifications to GPL code would not have to have accompanying source.